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Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Travel, and home
So after 42 days of travelling through Pakistan, I head off to Baroda. How do I feel, at having to travel again? Well, I'm very tired, and I wish I could rest, maybe for a week, maybe a month, maybe longer. I'm lazy. But then, in the handful of days I was at home in Mumbai, I found myself descending into the same slothful habits of old: staying awake till 3am surfing trash or reading magazines or watching TV; playing Hearts through the afternoon in office, trying to make my opponents go 26, 52, 78, 104; lapsing into a jaded, zombielike way of non-thinking.
When I am on the move, it is different: the sheer newness of the landscape around me keeps my mind active, and I am meeting new people all the time, and cannot take anything for granted. Yes, the tea is too sweet, and teabags too messy, and sometimes one has to be social when one wants to be alone, and at other times one feels so alone and there is no one to be social with. Travelling has its own patterns, but (with apologies to Tolstoy) every uninspiring town is at least uninspiring in its own way. Not that Baroda is uninspiring. Not at all.
Off I go then. Ta da.
When I am on the move, it is different: the sheer newness of the landscape around me keeps my mind active, and I am meeting new people all the time, and cannot take anything for granted. Yes, the tea is too sweet, and teabags too messy, and sometimes one has to be social when one wants to be alone, and at other times one feels so alone and there is no one to be social with. Travelling has its own patterns, but (with apologies to Tolstoy) every uninspiring town is at least uninspiring in its own way. Not that Baroda is uninspiring. Not at all.
Off I go then. Ta da.
